This background and documents mentioned below are provided for the purpose of making known information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention, and in particular allowing the reader to understand advantages of the invention over devices and methods known to the inventor, but not necessarily public. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed as admitting, that any of the following documents or methods known to the inventor constitute legally citable prior art against the present invention.
CA 2,343,911 entitled “Tree Planting Mound Preparation Apparatus” teaches, in FIG. 7 thereof, an excavator 26 modified to have a disc blade 7 mounded on a distal end of the excavator moveable arm, replacing the excavator bucket normally there situated. CA '911 does not teach any means or device for injecting seedlings into soil, nor any manner or apparatus to provide seedlings at the distal end of the moveable arm 18.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,343,663 entitled “Horizontal Boring Apparatus” teaches, in FIG. 1 thereof, an crawler excavator 10 having a hydraulically powered rotary drive mechanism 30 attached to a distal end of the excavator moveable articulated arm 18, replacing the excavator bucket normally there situated, for powering a helical boring tool. U.S. Pat. No. '663 does not teach any means or device for injecting seedlings into soil, nor any manner or apparatus to provide seedlings at the distal end of the moveable arm 18.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,563 entitled “Mulching Apparatus” to the within inventor, teaches a powered excavator-type vehicle 10 having a manipulable boom 12, to which mulching apparatus 14 is removably coupled. Hydraulic connections are provided between boom 12 and mulching apparatus 14 to power hydraulic motor 16. A mulching head 24 at the distal end of the manipulable boom 12, has a rotatable base plate 37, having protruding cutting teeth 42, 44. U.S. Pat. No. '563 does not teach any means or device for injecting seedlings into soil, nor any manner or apparatus to provide seedlings at the distal end of the moveable arm 18.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,818,957 entitled “Land Clearing and Tree Planting Site Preparation Apparatus” teaches a tracked vehicle such as a bulldozer or skid-steer device, having a boom means for mounting a rotating cutting and tree planting site preparation wheel. Hydraulic motor means are provided for rotating shafts powering the cutting/side preparation wheel.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,413,661 entitled “Boom Mount” teaches a mobile tree processor having a boom member reciprocally mounted thereon, wherein the boom member can be raised and lowered while it remains horizontal and parallel to the ground. U.S. Pat. No. '661 does not teach any means or device for injecting seedlings into soil, nor any manner or apparatus to provide seedlings at the distal end of the boom 30.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,351,253 entitled “Tree Planter and Trailer” teaches a truck having a digger mounted to an hydraulically mounted boom pivotally mounted at one end to the frame of the truck, and a trailer which can be towed by the truck.
US 2006/0156590 entitled “Tree Root Pruning Apparatus and Method of Use” teaches a tracked vehicle with an articulated machine arm, with root pruning vibratory apparatus affixed to the distal end of such machine arm.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,343,659 entitled “Mini Shrub Spader” teaches a hydraulically actuated U-blade, which is attached to a frame which has at its opposite end a three-point hitch arrangement for attachment to a 3-point hitch on the back of a tractor.
Notably with regard to the above, none of such prior art documents not teach any means or device for injecting seedlings into soil, nor any manner or apparatus to provide seedlings at the distal end of the boom 30 to allow for successive injection of a plurality of seedlings simultaneously into soil.
Tracts of forested or burned land having residual tree stumps and/or tree snags, or alternatively rocky land, all traditionally require significant site preparation using mechanized equipment such as bulldozers, rock pickers and the like, before conventional seedling planting devices can operate to plant trees on such tracts of land.
While mechanized site preparation in the above manner is not needed when large labour forces of humans, who may manually navigate and avoid such obstacles when planting small trees and seedlings, such alternative necessarily has high cost drawbacks.
Accordingly, a real need exists in the silviculture industry for automated seedling and small tree planting apparatus which can not only successively inject a plurality of seedlings or small trees simultaneously into soil, and do so continuously in a relatively rapid and efficient manner using few human operators, but which may also be able to do so over obstacle-strewn landscape.